Wednesday, 1 November 2017

Six Reasons Why Good Design is Essential for Small Companies

Resources can be limited when
you’re starting in business. Making good decisions about your marketing
material is key and in the long run it always pays to use talented design professionals.

In fact, there are six great
reasons why good design is absolutely essential in helping your small business
grow:

1.It creates a great first impression

You know what they say: you don’t
get a second chance to make a good first impression. Whether it’s your logo, an
email signature, your business card or website, potential customers will judge your
company in just a few seconds based on visual appeal alone.

Designers are great at putting themselves
in the potential clients shoes, this can be hard to do when it’s your own
business! Let them give you feedback on how they think your brand should look
and feel.

2.It builds confidence

As you grow your company it’s important
to inspire confidence in your customers and prospects. Who are they going to
give their money to? Probably the company that looks experienced, professional,
trustworthy and established.

Designers ensure you communicate
your brand’s culture, character and personality with your marketing. This will
inspire trust in both your consumers and employees, creating solid long term
foundations for your company to thrive.

3.It makes you stand out

Small businesses all have one
thing in common. They face stiff competition. They thrive or they die. To make
themselves stand out and have a better chance of success, they can use high
quality, good pricing, excellent customer service, rapid response, or something
else entirely.

They can use creativity. In fact,
your company image can go a long way towards making your business unique. The
problem is, many business owners seem to shy away from the bold design that will
set them apart from their competition. They don’t want anything out of the
ordinary. So they go for the safe option and their business just gets lost in
the crowd.

Anything you can do to make your
company more memorable is crucial. So hire a professional design agency to develop
a unique image for your business. They will use colours, typefaces and imagery
to create a unique mood for your business. Then, your customers will have the
same experience reading your brochure as they do browsing your website. It will
help you become recognisable and memorable.

In short, give your customers or
visitors something to remember and talk about. Then they will not only buy from
you and keep coming back, they will recommend your brand to other people.

4.It helps you sell without selling

Good design and consistent branding
also makes referrals easier. New customers are like gold dust for any small
company and the better you are at catching their eye and bringing them in, the
more your business will grow. In fact, professional design makes your company
and its image memorable without you having to use any hard sell.

What’s more, high quality design
helps you to turn first time shoppers into loyal customers. An eyecatching,
memorable logo, well-designed website, emails, ads and brochures all with a
consistent look can be the difference between someone coming back to you or
choosing a competitor. You need to make the act of looking at any of your
marketing materials a pleasant and consistent visual experience.

5.It saves you time and money in the long run

You can almost guarantee that
when a company doesn’t commission proper graphic design in the beginning, they
will definitely have to do it properly at some point down the line.

The irony is, good design has
longevity and it can often work out cheaper to pay for great graphic design once
rather than paying for inferior design many times over. As the old saying goes,
‘Buy cheap, buy twice.’ Worse still, redesigning a company’s image over and
over again wastes time and money and can disrupt and disjoint your brand image.

6.It can become a valuable financial asset

So with good design at the heart
of everything you do, you can really build a successful brand. How successful?

Well, here are a few statistics
that will give you some food for thought. According to Forbes’ annual ‘The
World’s Most Valuable Brand’ list, Apple’s brand is worth $154.1 billion alone,
while Google comes in at $82.5 billion, and Microsoft rounds out the top 3 at
$75.2 billion.

As you can see, your brand can be
a valuable asset in a number of ways, not only building up your brand awareness
but instilling confidence and professionalism for both existing and potential
clients. Building a business doesn’t happen over night but developing your own
brand with its unique design style and aesthetic is a great step in the right
direction. All it takes is a call to a good design agency.

A Bit About Us

We are The New Fat, one of Nottingham’s more recognised creative design and brand communication specialists. Since our 1999 inception, The New Fat has served organisations including B&Q, Bombardier and Penguin Books with the innovative, outsourced design services they need to develop and communicate their brands effectively.
We’re just as capable and comfortable working for national and international brands as we are with smaller niche companies and we continue to delight a broad spectrum of clients spanning pretty much all industry sectors, from leisure to retail, engineering to manufacturing and public sector to professional services. Our services are as perfect for organisations with overflow requirements as for companies lacking their own in-house design departments and although we’re Nottingham based, we currently enjoy working with clients throughout the UK and spanning the globe.